


Live and Let Live (But Don't Let Go)

by Parker_Haven_Wuornos



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And comedy spread throughout, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ghosts, Multi, Ouija, Post-Canon, Pre-ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:34:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24011392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Parker_Haven_Wuornos/pseuds/Parker_Haven_Wuornos
Summary: He turned the water on too hot, which Duke would hate, but finding little ways to needle him had been habit for so long, and being too nice to one another felt like giving in to the crushing weight of their loss, so they went around in old habits, making jokes about killing one another that were no longer funny.Audrey might have laughed.Swallowing a lump in his throat, Nathan stepped out of the shower, he wiped his face on a scratchy towel, resolving to get Duke new ones as a housewarming—boatwarming?—present once they were done with the Echo.He almost didn’t notice the writing on the mirror, except that he’d seen those words before. They were still in a picture on his phone.I'm Here
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Audrey Parker/Nathan Wuornos, Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos
Comments: 19
Kudos: 46





	Live and Let Live (But Don't Let Go)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you're all surviving quarantine and doing as well as you can be.

The first week was dark. No one bothered him, and that was nice.

Nathan let five days go by, and then he went to see Duke.

He was asleep in Gloria’s spare bedroom, and for a minute, Nathan thought he was still under, thought maybe he’d missed something. His breath hitched in his throat, his knees ached with impact when he threw himself onto the floor next to the bed, his fingers searching for signs of life.

Duke’s eyes opened, warm brown and confused. Nathan didn’t pull his hand away from Duke’s neck, but the frantic pulse-seeking turned into a caress. The confusion slipped away, replaced by each stage of grief, one after the other, flitting across Duke’s face one at a time until, finally, acceptance.

_She’s gone._

Neither of them said it; neither of them had to. She would be here if she could be, if there was any possible way.

They didn’t say anything that whole day, and that was fine. They shared the silence, and Nathan found that it was a little lighter than it had been.

The second week, Gloria let Duke go home, except that the Rouge was gone, and the Gull was a wreck, so Nathan was waiting for him in Gloria’s driveway.

“I’m not moving in with you,” Duke said, in a voice that begged Nathan to convince him otherwise.

“Don’t need to move,” Nathan said. “It’s just somewhere to crash.”

“I’ll get my own place,” Duke said, still unsure.

“Don’t,” Nathan said quietly, then backtracked. “Uh, you should wait until you find somewhere nice, or a new boat.”

Duke’s eyes searched his face and Nathan indulged in a moment of relief that they were _Duke’s_ eyes and not the Aether-black voids they had been. “What is it?” Duke asked quietly. “What aren’t you saying?”

Nathan had to look away, focusing on the road, but he answered Duke’s question. “It’s so quiet, so empty without…”

“I’m not her,” Duke said.

“No,” Nathan agreed, and he let the first smile thaw through the pain. “But you’re tall and loud.”

And Duke, despite everything, smiled back.

At the end of the third week, Sal called Duke and said he was leaving Haven, and that if Duke wanted his boat, he was welcome to it.

Nathan tried to convince him to stay, but Duke insisted that the boat was livable, if not as nice as it would be one day, so he was leaving.

The first night, Nathan had a dream that they had gone through with their first, desperate plan. That Duke had died in his arms, that his eyes had closed and not reopened.

Nathan woke up sweating and cold, sensations he’d thought were contradictory, but it had been so long since he’d experienced any that he couldn’t be sure. He was dialing Duke before he was awake enough to think clearly.

“Nate?” Duke’s voice was too awake for how late it was, but at least that spared Nathan from feeling bad about waking him up.

“Are you okay?” Nathan asked, even though it was stupid, even though there was no reason for Duke not to be okay anymore.

“Yeah, Nate, I’m okay. Are you?”

“Had a bad dream,” He admitted.

“Do you want me to come over?” Duke asked.

_Yes._ “No, I’m alright. Just checking in.”

Having Duke there would have been nice, but Nathan had promised to move on, really move on, and he didn’t want to lean on Duke too much to do it.

The same thing happened for the next three nights. Nathan’s dreams twisted around his memories, finding new ways to terrify him with what might have been, or tempt him with what couldn’t be. He woke up and called Duke, who was either awake before the call came, or he sounded relieved at having been woken. Nathan’s dreams weren’t the only ones that were haunted.

When he went to bed on the fourth night without Duke, Nathan turned his phone’s ringer all the way up, just in case.

Sure enough, hours later, he was pulled out of watching Duke walk into the barn by his phone ringing.

“Nate?” Duke said, before he could even struggle out a greeting.

“Yeah?”

“Can I come over?”

“Yeah.”

Later, neither of them would know what started it, or if Duke had come here looking for this, but somehow, broken by nightmares and grief, Nathan’s too-small kitchen table became a confessional. Nathan offered up his sins and found absolution in Duke’s eyes, and he did his best to give Duke the same thing.

It ended with them clinging to each other, slumped on the floor and crying because they’d met in the middle, falling of their chairs when the tears started.

He woke up feeling exhausted and clean.

The fourth week was when he noticed the first weird thing. If he’d counted the days—which he’d been very careful not to—he would have known that twenty-seven days had gone by since the barn had vanished, but that might mean nothing.

The fourth week, after he and Duke had finally made a peace they could rebuild on, Nathan was finally able to pay enough attention to notice that things in his house weren’t what they should be.

He was sure he’d closed the cabinets, because he always did, and yet when he’d gotten up in the morning, they’d all been open.

Still, the night before had been rough—all nights were rough unless Duke or Dwight came by—so maybe he’d just forgotten.

When he and Duke happened to be at the same place around lunchtime, Nathan didn’t mention the strangeness. It was barely on his mind anymore, what with all the work that was going into fixing the damage from the troubles. He didn’t have time to worry about cabinets that didn’t stay closed; he had to coordinate relief efforts, make sure that everyone had a roof over their heads, make sure no one looked too closely or asked too many questions about how the town had gotten so wrecked.

It was plenty of work, so when he fell into bed, exhausted, he only barely remembered to turn his phone volume on high before he passed out.

His dreams that night weren’t scary for once, but Audrey was there and that was almost worse. He woke up thinking that maybe he’d open his eyes and she would be laying next to him, but the disadvantage of being able to feel was that he knew the bed was cold. His hand was already on the phone to call Duke, but he hesitated.

Maybe, for once, he should try to go back to sleep on his own. Someday he would have to. He had promised that he would move on, and that meant being able to sleep without help, to go through life without needing someone else to help him breathe.

Nathan attempted to settle. The sheets were wrong, too worn, almost threadbare in places. He hadn’t noticed while he was troubled, but now it was abundantly clear. He turned over, flipped his pillow to the cool side, considered finding a fan or even adjusting the thermostat. He was about to simply give up and go downstairs to pour a pot of coffee down his throat when his phone rang.

“Duke?” he said. “Are you okay?” A thousand possibilities ran through his mind, things that could have happened, ways Duke might have been hurt since Nathan had seen him, the memory of his eyes sliding closed, him sinking, boneless into Nathan’s arms while Audrey choked out desperate comfort.

_I can’t lose you again. I can’t risk that._

“I’m fine,” Duke said, sounding no more than tired. “Bad dream. The usual.” 

“Want me to come over there?” Nathan offered.

“No,” He said quickly. “I just had to… wanted to make sure you were good.”

Nathan propped the phone on his shoulder, shifting in bed and sitting up. “What was yours?”

“I killed you,” Duke said slowly. “Couldn’t stop myself. Sometimes it’s Audrey.”

“I did kill you,” Nathan said. “Surprised you don’t dream about that.” _I do._

Duke sighed, barely audible over the phone. “Only technically. It wasn’t your fault Gloria overestimated the sedative, Nate.”

“Your heart stopped,” Nathan said. “I killed you.” He looked down at his arm, the tattoo harsh against his skin.

He heard sounds on Duke’s end, imagined him getting up to putter around the galley, trying to assemble a decent cup of coffee without turning lights on. “It was the only way, and anyway, it didn’t stick.”

Nathan knew Duke was joking, he recognized the tone, and the pain behind it. “Couldn’t even do that right,” Nathan said, accepting the change in tone and trying for a joke of his own.

“What did she say?” Duke asked after a long minute of silence. “Did she…”

“She wanted us to move on,” Nathan said. He’d said it before, knew that Duke knew this, but he understood why he kept asking. 

“I say goodbye to her every night,” Duke said. “I wish…”

“She hated goodbyes,” Nathan reminded him. “She probably preferred it this way.”

“I don’t.”

“Me either.”

Another long, heavy pause. “Goodnight, Nate.”

“Goodnight, Duke.” _I love you_ almost slipped out, but Nathan caught the words just before they escaped. He was tired, too tired to know for sure whether he meant them or if it was a habit, a nice way to end a call, despite the fact that Nathan hadn’t ended calls like that with anyone except Audrey.

Exhausted, he rolled over and fell asleep before he could think about it anymore.

It was days before he noticed anything else that was strange enough to make him think about it. When he did, it was too much to brush off as his own forgetfulness.

The fact of the matter was that, even with all the stress of trying to hold the town together, Nathan would not have spilled flour all over his counter and then left it there.

He grabbed a rag, staring at the mess and wondering if he could just leave it until later. But later, he wouldn’t have slept more than he just had, and he’d have done a whole day’s work.

“Let’s get this over with,” He muttered, wishing Duke was there to share in the misery, or at least help clean up.

_How did this even happen?_ He wondered. The cabinet where he kept the flour was open, but nothing else was disturbed. The shelf hadn’t fallen, the bag looked like it had been poured out rather than bursting from some unknown trigger.

It wasn’t until he’d set the bag down and was bringing the rag towards the mess that he noticed it.

Written neatly in the mess of flour, as if someone had drawn their finger through it, were the words, “I’m here.”

With shaking hands, he pulled out his phone and took a picture of it. And then, mechanically, he cleaned the counter, swiping some of the salvageable flour back into the bag, but scooping most into the garbage or the sink.

He went to work in a fog and found an excuse to leave the station as soon as possible. He went to where the work was happening, hoping to find Duke, but feeling some relief when Dwight greeted him.

He was shoveling debris off a residential street while Lizzie, Frankie, Amelia, and Sophie sorted screws on a nearby table.

Nathan waited thirty-two minutes before he asked Dwight the question that had been sitting heavily in his mind. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

He wasn’t surprised when Dwight shook his head. “Not anymore. Why?”

Nathan looked away.

“Nathan?” Dwight asked. He set down the shovel he’d been using to clear debris. His face had softened, and Nathan could see pity there. “I miss her too. I know it’s not the same—”

“It was just a question,” Nathan said quickly. He didn’t want to hear her name. He didn’t want to connect it to the questions that had been spinning around in his head.

_It’s just flour._

_It’s weird._

_It could have been an accident._

_I could be seeing things._

_I should get my head checked, who knows how many concussions I got that I didn’t even feel._

“You sure, Nathan?” Dwight asked.

“Yeah, I just, uh, found a newspaper clipping that said my house was haunted. Thought it was funny.”

Dwight’s smile was forced, but Nathan was glad he tried. “Just let me know if you start seeing ghosts; I’ll set you up with the girls’ shrink.”

Nathan forced a laugh of his own and went back to clearing debris off the road. His phone—and the picture on it—felt like a weight dragging him down into the ocean.

He would need someone who was a much stronger swimmer than him if he ever wanted to find the surface.

Duke didn’t call him that night. Nathan didn’t call Duke either. He was too busy staring at his ceiling wondering what the hell he was thinking or doing. When he finally managed to fall into a restless sleep, he dreamt about Audrey.

She slipped through his walls, leaving flour footprints that he followed around Haven until he was standing in front of the old armory. Audrey looked back at him once and then walked through the door. He charged after her, but was as solid as the door, and he slammed into it.

When he woke, his heart was pounding and he was sweating. Thin light filtered through the blinds; it was early enough to get up.

He shuffled to the kitchen and made coffee, pouring it down his throat well before it was cool enough to drink.

The kitchen looked to be in order, there was no more flour, the cabinets were closed like he’d left them. Everything was the same.

_Don’t think about it,_ He told himself. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t survive the hope if he did. Because there was no way. There was no way. Audrey was gone, and two words written in flour could not change that. Moreover, Nathan had a promise to keep. Obsessing over ghosts would put him back.

He splashed some water on his face. _Move on. Move On. Move on. You promised._

Nathan went to work, because that was what he always did. He talked to the selectmen, worked with contractors, argued about which repairs had to be prioritized, and generally went well beyond the job description of the average police chief. Work was good, it was something to think about, and there was so much to think about, and talk about, and debate, so that for the next few weeks, he didn’t let himself think about the fact that his shoes would randomly relocate, that sometimes he thought he saw letters in the steam on his bathroom mirror, that doors he was sure he’d closed would swing open.

“It’s an old house,” he told himself. “The doors need repairs; the mirror is warped.” That didn’t explain the shoes, or the flour, but he wasn’t thinking about that. He couldn’t.

He was moving on.

Nathan made a point of seeing Duke at least a couple times a week. They met on Duke’s boat and talked about the work it needed. The Rouge had been a decaying shit-heap, but Duke had made it cozy. His new ship, the Echo, was just a shit-heap, but it reminded Nathan of the junk boats they’d climbed around on as kids, and as bad as the kitchen looked, Duke always managed to cook something amazing.

They didn’t talk about Audrey, not because they were avoiding it, but because there was no need. Whenever they saw each other, they each dutifully took half of the other’s grief, carrying the twin loads between them, undiscussed.

Anyway, there was plenty to talk about. Nathan had known Duke was good at repair work, knew that he had a lot of practical skills because he was the type of man who liked doing things himself, didn’t trust other people to fix things for him, but he hadn’t realized the extent of it until now.

In the weeks since the troubles had gone, he’d seen Duke crawling around on stranger’s roofs making repairs, had seen him showing kids how to use hammers and drills so they could help parents fix destroyed garages, had seen him go into unstable buildings to prop up rudimentary supports. For Duke, it was probably a misplaced attempt at penance, but for the town it was another pair of hands, the thing they needed most right then.

Sometimes, Dwight came to their dinners or lunches or breakfasts, whatever they could work time in for. Sometimes they talked about Audrey when he was there; he seemed to think they should, and neither of them corrected him, because Nathan was sure he couldn’t have explained the system he had with Duke, and doubted that Duke could do it either.

It was peaceful, and peace was what they needed most after everything they’d been through.

So, no matter what strange and not-quite-explainable things happened, Nathan ignored them and clung to his peace.

Nathan had stopped counting weeks. It was better not to. All he knew was that the sun was out more and that it was getting warmer. He would be able to start planting a garden soon; he’d always wanted to, and now there was no reason not to. Duke had even offered to help him clear away some of his front lawn to make more room.

In exchange, Nathan was helping him refinish the deck on the Echo. It was hot, dirty work and by the end of it Nathan couldn’t even bear to get into his car feeling like this. “This isn’t an even exchange,” Nathan said, almost a joke.

Duke cracked a broken smile. “Well… you did kill me.”

Nathan dropped his head, a laugh that sounded like a sob escaping him. “Your heart was only stopped for a minute—”

“Three,” Duke corrected, “It was three minutes, which means for every one thing I do for you, you have to do three for me.”

“This counts as three,” Nathan said, gesturing to the deck.

Duke weighed this for a moment. “Fine. I’ll even let you use my shower as a bonus.”

Nathan smiled.

He turned the water on too hot, which Duke would hate, but finding little ways to needle him had been habit for so long, and being too nice to one another felt like giving in to the crushing weight of their loss, so they went around in old habits, making jokes about killing one another that were no longer funny.

Audrey might have laughed.

Swallowing a lump in his throat, Nathan stepped out of the shower, he wiped his face on a scratchy towel, resolving to get Duke new ones as a housewarming—boatwarming?—present once they were done with the Echo.

He almost didn’t notice the writing on the mirror, except that he’d seen those words before. They were still in a picture on his phone.

_I’m here._

He ran out to meet Duke, words sticking in his throat. “Weird things!” He finally managed to shout.

“Yes,” Duke said mildly, looking Nathan up and down. “This is weird.”

Nathan looked down, suddenly remembering that he was only wearing a towel and that it was hanging rather precariously on his narrow hips. 

“Not that!” He struggled to articulate, the rush of all the strange things he’d been ignoring in his own house was choking him. “The, the mirror!”

Duke’s mouth dropped open. “You saw it?”

“I’m here,” Nathan said. “I… I need my pants—”

“That would be a start,” Duke said, dazed.

“No! My phone,” Nathan said. “Need to show you something.”

“Alright, um, yeah.”

Duke was still standing there in a daze when Nathan stumbled back to him, holding out his phone. He hadn’t even bothered to put his pants on, but while Duke studied the photo, he tightened the towel.

“Nate,” Duke said, very quietly, “What am I looking at?”

“Flour.”

“The writing?” Duke asked.

“It says—”

“I SEE WHAT IT SAYS!”

Nathan flinched away.

Duke took a few long, deep breaths. “When?”

“About a month after…”

He nodded.

“Your mirror?” Nathan asked tentatively.

“Happens every once in a while. Thought I was seeing things.”

“Me too.”

“What… what does it mean?” Duke asked, looking at Nathan with eyes that were beautiful and hopeful and so, so scared. “Could she be—”

“Don’t,” Nathan choked. “I can’t… I don’t want to—”

“But what if—”

“And what if not, Duke?” Nathan asked. “What if we hope for this and it’s nothing? I can’t. I said I would move on, and I’m _trying_ , Duke. I’m trying so fucking hard.”

Carefully, Duke reached out, putting a hand on Nathan’s shoulder. His hands were so warm. Suddenly, Nathan was very aware that he was barely dressed. The way Duke was looking at him was a different kind of nudity though. He was laid bare under Duke’s gaze and all the hope there.

“We have to know,” Duke said.

“I can’t… if I go back in, I might not come out again.”

Duke pulled him into a hug, and Nathan was drowning again. He was too aware of Duke’s shirt against his bare chest, of the fact that he wasn’t dressed and his towel was doing its best which still wasn’t much, of the fact that Duke smelled like sweat and wood finish and sunlight and it wasn’t good but it wasn’t bad at all.

“We can get through this,” Duke said, and Nathan nodded. He sounded so sure, and dumb plans and reckless confidence were supposed to be Nathan’s territory, so maybe because Duke was saying it, it would be true.

Maybe they could figure this out without dying inside it.

Nathan just breathed for a long minute, Finally, he pulled away, trying to find normal, trying to accept all this, trying to keep the towel from falling down. “What do we do?”

Duke looked him up and down, and Nathan really hoped he wasn’t imagining the glint of appreciation there. “You get dressed; I’m going to make a call.”

When he returned to the deck, still trying to button his shirt, Duke was on the phone.

“Yeah, just hypothetically… Okay. Well last time—No, I wasn’t kidding, they’re really gone—but last time we could talk. Is there a way—I’m not doing that!” Duke nodded. “Yeah. Right, no, I know you are Seth. Yes, thank you for your help.”

Nathan raised his eyebrows and mouthed _Seth?_ at Duke who shrugged a little helplessly, as if to say “Who else?”

Nathan didn’t know who else they could have called, but calling Seth seemed… it seemed like an admission. If they did this, would they come out the other side of it like Seth? Desperate to believe in absolutely anything?

Then again, if this was what they thought it was, it still wouldn’t be the weirdest thing they’d seen.

“Thanks for helping. Yes, again. Nah, not much for you to do here these days, unless you like manual labor. Yeah, I thought so. Have a good one. Keep in touch.”

He hung up the phone. Nathan tried to be casual when he said, “Didn’t realize you were still talking to Seth.”

Duke smirked. “Jealous?”

“No,” Nathan said quickly, shrugged. “I didn’t think he was your type.”

“Do you want to know what he said?” Duke asked.

No more delaying the inevitable. “Yes.”

“He said it sounds like a presence—”

“What does that mean?”   
“Just that it’s something. We don’t know that it’s her and the only way to find out is to ask.”

“Ask?”

“There’s a way,” Duke said, “But you aren’t going to like it.”

Nathan didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. He didn’t like the wooden board, or the words carved onto it, or the fact that he’d waited two horrible, anxious days, only for Duke to reveal that _this_ had been his plan all along.

“A Ouija board?” He said. “Really, Duke?” It was spread out across the table in Duke’s galley, looking set up and ready for a weird girls’ sleepover.

“We have to make contact somehow; Seth said—”

“Oh, Seth said,” Nathan said. “Because he’s the sanest person we know.”

“He helped us when you were a ghost!”

“That was different! It was a trouble; I wasn’t a real ghost.”

Duke shrugged. “Well… Audrey didn’t really die, so maybe she’s not really a ghost either.”

The words were punch. Dead or not, Audrey was gone and for Duke to say it so casually, so suddenly, felt like an insult. “Duke—”

“Nathan, I know this seems crazy but… something tried to communicate. Someone wanted us to know it was here. What if… what if it was her? There’s no harm in doing something stupid.”

Gloria had once told him that people used to use seances and Ouija boards to mourn. Maybe this was something they had to do, just to be sure.

“Anyway,” Duke said. “We know all of this is insane, otherwise one of us would have told Dwight or Gloria.”

That was true. It made perfect sense that Duke and Nathan might have gone off the deep end. Nathan knew they’d both been close a number of times. If they told either of the sanest people they knew, they would be worried. This had to stay between him and Duke.

And if they were going to believe something crazy, they might as well do something crazy about it.

“So how do we do this?” Nathan asked.

“Sit on the other side of the table. I’ll sit here and we both put our hands on the planchette—”

“This weird triangle thing?”

“It’s called a planchette—”

“DUKE.”

“Fine, yes put your hand on the weird triangle thing and close your eyes.” Duke took a deep breath.

Nathan closed his eyes, feeling the smooth wooden planchette beneath his fingertips. “Is it working?”

“Shut up, Nathan.” Duke took another breath. “Focus your mind, think about what you want from this. Ignore everything else.”

“Finally, permission to ignore you.”

“Nathan!”

Nathan did as he was told, matching his breaths to Duke’s and focusing on the board between them, and the fact that he hoped they would get something.

“Is anyone there?” Duke asked. “You told us you were here. Are you still here?”

Silence filled the galley, except the creaking of old wood and metal, and the faint slap of waves against the side. This was stupid—

“Are you here?” Duke asked again.

Slowly, the planchette slid across the board, Nathan almost let go of it, but he caught up in time for it to stop. He opened his eyes.

“Yes.”

Duke met his eyes across the board, full of hope and terror. “What are you?”

The planchette slid over to the letters, stopping at A.

It slid again, this time to U.

Nathan couldn’t breathe.

D

R

E

Y

“Parker?” Her name slipped from between Nathan’s lips, barely audible.

Duke took a breath. “Can you prove that?”

“Duke!”

“Nathan, it could be anything. Haven is a weird place—”

The planchette slid again before Duke could finish.

C

O

L

O

R

A

D

O

Duke smiled.

Nathan grimaced. “Very cute.”

Duke just grinned at him. “Jealous?”

The planchette slid again. Hitting the H-A-H-A

“Are you laughing at me?” Nathan asked. Tears pricked at his eyes.

The planchette slid up to the Yes.

“It’s really you?” Duke asked, breathless.

Away from the yes and then back to it.

“How?” Nathan asked.

S-T-U-C-K

“Where? We’ll get you out, we’ll find a way—”

But then the planchette went still. Nathan swore he could feel the difference, could tell the moment she left.

“Audrey?” Duke asked, clearly sensing what Nathan had.

No answer, and the planchette was still.

Duke was blurry when Nathan looked up at him. “What… what just happened?”

“What does it mean?” Duke answered.

“It means,” Nathan took a deep breath swallowing a lump in his throat, “That she’s not gone.”

Duke nodded. “We need an expert.”

This time when he called Seth, Duke put him on speaker phone.

“Seth Byrne, seeker of darkness and danger, slayer of monsters, how can I help you?”

“Seth, remember how I asked about contacting a ghost?” Duke said.

“Yup.” Nathan sensed that Seth wasn’t really paying attention to him.

“Well it worked. We need you.”

“You have a ghost?” Seth said.

“Or something. How fast can you get to Maine?”

Seth let out a breath. “I don’t know, man, I’m pretty booked up for the next—”

“Seth.”

“Fine,” Seth groaned. “But I want to meet one of the mermen.”

Nathan frowned. “The troubles are gone they’re just—”

Duke drew two fingers across his throat. _Shut up, Nate!_

Nathan did.

“I’ll be there in two days—” Duke opened his mouth but, as if sensing his displeasure, Seth continued, “—Driving takes time, Duke. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

The next two days passed in a haze. They tried to communicate with Audrey again but didn’t get an answer. Nathan spread flour on his counter and the next day there was a heart drawn in it. It was unusually sentimental for Audrey, but he smiled about it for the next ten hours, until Seth stepped onto the deck where he and Duke were waiting for him.

“I’m here,” Seth said, his voice artificially deep. “Show me the spirits.”

Nathan glared at Duke. “This was your idea.”

Ignoring him, Duke stepped forward and hugged Seth. “Good to see you.”

Seth smiled. “Sorry for forgetting you.”

“Didn’t do a very good job.” Duke smirked.

“You can flirt later,” Nathan said sourly. “We have work to do.”

“Don’t you have a populace to oppress?” Seth shot back immediately.

Nathan was about to fumble for a retort, but thankfully Duke saved him. “Come on, we’ll show you.”

The board was still sitting on the table, the planchette centered neatly.

“Is this where you made contact?” Seth asked, remarkably businesslike.

Nathan nodded. “She’s also spoken to me at my house. She writes in flour.”

“Not unheard of,” Seth said. “Tell me what she said.”

“She said she was stuck, but she couldn’t explain how.”

“How did she… How did she die?” For a man who made a living chasing ghosts, he seemed remarkably uncomfortable with death.

Nathan took a breath before he launched into the story, abridging the details of the barn and how it had been destroyed and how they’d rebuilt it.

“This barn, armory thing could be some kind of trans-planal shifter,” Seth said. “If it fell apart, she could be trapped on an adjacent plane, trying to communicate with you.”

“Right,” Nathan said. “So, we need to get her back on this plane.”

“Right, but that’s not…”

Duke took a breath, looking around them. “Audrey Parker, Audrey Parker, Audrey Parker.”

Nathan glared at him, but Duke just shrugged. “It was worth a try.”

“Was it?” He turned to Seth. “So, how do we bring her back?”

Seth gave Nathan an alarmed look. “That’s necromancy; it’s pretty frowned upon.”

“Are you saying we have to just leave her?”

“I’m saying that what happened to Audrey—shifting to an alternate plane so that what’s left is an echo that has disjointed, fragile means of communication—is what a lot of people think all ghosts are.”

“So…”

His eyes were full of sympathy. “If we had a way to bring people back from that, don’t you think everyone would do it?”

It should have been what Nathan was expecting. The hopes he’d been beating back with a stick since he’d first seen her words in the flour broke over him like a wave, sweeping him back under and deep into the grief.

Duke slammed his fist on the table. “NO! This is Haven. It’s not like other places, we can—”

“Duke,” Seth said gently. “To pull her out we’d need some kind of… some kind of rift that we could manipulate into reaching whatever plane she’s on—”

Nathan pulled his head out of his arms, ignoring how heavy it felt, looking at Duke like a drunk man trying to do math. “Like a thinny?”

“A what?” Seth said.

“There are these places around Haven that are gateways to the void between universes, we call them thinnies,” Duke explained, waving a hand.

“Holy fuck,” Seth breathed.

Duke’s eyes were blazing, fury and fear and so much love it was blinding. “Would that work? Could we use a thinny to get Audrey?”

“Maybe,” Seth said, “but first we have to stop calling them that. It’s a rift.”

“Rift, thinny, whatever!” Nathan snapped. “How do we do it?”

“This is theoretical,” Seth said.

“So was making a machine that could help you communicate with ghosts,” Nathan said, “And you did that in an afternoon. You _can_ do this, Seth.”

Seth smiled and turned around to rummage in his bag, pulling out and setting aside various cobbled-together machines that all looked like demented calculators.

Duke gave Nathan an incredulous look, but Nathan felt like he was finally treading water. They were going to do this. He couldn’t get this close, couldn’t let this much hope in, without giving over to it entirely. They had come this far; why not go all the way?

He looked at Duke. “Are you in?”

Duke smiled. “This might be a dumb plan.”

“We’re great at those.” Nathan smiled back.

“Me? The dumb plans are all yours, Nate, I was just there.”

On the table next to them, the planchette moved on its own to rest on the Yes.

“Yes?” Nathan said. “Are you taking his side?”

It circled around the Yes enthusiastically.

Duke laughed. “Did you hear all that?” He asked. “We’re going to get you out.”

B-E-C-A-R-E-F-U-L

“We will,” Duke said.

I-L-O-V-E-U

Duke met his eyes, looking exactly the way he had when he’d made Nathan help him practice asking Danielle Holstock to prom. He attempted a joke that Nathan didn’t buy at all. “Which one of us?”

The planchette slid up to rest on the yes.

Nathan put his hand on Duke’s shoulder, surprised that for once he had to be the steady one, because Duke looked lost. “We already knew that,” He reminded Duke.

3-T-H-I-N-G-S

Nathan smiled. “The three things Audrey Parker loves most in the world. You, me, and helping troubled people. She finished the last one.”

Duke half-smiled, his eyes warm and liquid and gorgeous. Nathan’s heart was racing, a feeling that he’d forgotten, that he was surprised was so pleasant, because he’d sworn it had been a bad feeling.

They were staring at each other, hardly any space between them—somehow they’d gotten closer while they’d been talking without Nathan even noticing—he could close that distance.

“Uh, should I go, or?” Seth held up the device he’d been rummaging for, waving it around as it made noncommittal noises.

“No,” Duke said, and the spell was broken. “Do whatever you need to.”

Even though there were only a couple more inches between them now, it felt like the same valley that had been there since Duke had woken up. They’d been chipping at it, trying to close the gap, finding middle ground whenever they could, but they’d never gotten as close as they had been a moment ago.

Audrey had wanted him to move on, and Nathan realized now that he’d been moving in Duke’s direction, and Duke in his. How many years would it have taken them to reconcile if it wasn’t for Audrey? Even as a ghost, she was pulling them back to each other.

_We’ll get you out,_ He vowed. _We’ll all move on together._

After a tense minute of wandering around the galley, muttering incoherently, Seth shook his head. “This place won’t work. We need one of the rifts you described that Audrey can access.”

“Meaning?”

“Ghosts tend toward places that they have emotional connections to.”

That explained her presence in his apartment and on Duke’s boat; she was where they were.

“Audrey wouldn’t have a connection to any of the thinnies,” Duke said, broken.

“Please don’t call them—"

“That’s not true,” Nathan said. “The beach.”

Comprehension dawned on Duke’s face. “The beach. The _beach_ , yes!”

“Right, the beach!” Seth said. “What beach?”

“How long will it take you to get ready?”

Seth waved his hands around vaguely. “I don’t know, I’ll have to connect to Audrey’s frequency and pin it to the rift so that it opens to where she is. Assuming she’s there when I get it, she should be able to walk right through but there are a million variables; no one has done this before—”

“SETH.”

He stopped, took a breath. “I don’t know. I have most of the equipment but making it work like this? It’s unheard of.” He raked his hand through his hair. “Maybe a week?”

“A week?” Duke burst. “Can’t you—”

Nathan put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently. “We waited this long. We can wait a week.”

The planchette slid, slowly, like Audrey was struggling to move it, over to the Yes. Nathan put his hand over it—the closest he could get to holding her hand—and smiled.

“We’re coming.”

Somehow, they managed to sleep that night. Nathan woke up with one leg thrown over Duke and one arm hanging off Duke’s bed. They had stayed up with Seth for hours, listening to technobabble neither of them fully understood as he explained what they were trying to do.

The next day, Nathan went to work. They had finally finished clearing the destruction and had moved on to rebuilding full-time.

Dwight was in his element, and even though Nathan was chief of police now, it was Dwight that was running things, which was good, because Nathan had nothing to offer today. He was half-asleep and what little brainpower he had was completely dedicated to what Seth was working on.

While Dwight was overseeing, Nathan did rounds around Haven, making sure people were safe, that everyone had some temporary shelter if they didn’t have their homes yet, that no fights were breaking out over prioritization. It was work he was used to after all these weeks, but it was different today.

Today, Duke was sitting shotgun. Today, their hands brushed occasionally when Nathan shifted gears. Today, they weren’t bowing under the weight of their misery for the first time in…

If he was being honest, Nathan would know that it was the first time they weren’t bearing some misery since before the troubles had come back.

It was hesitant, but better for that. Both of them ran before they walked. Both of them dove in headfirst, both into each other when they’d been younger, and then into Audrey when she’d arrived in Haven. That they were walking now, taking their time—because they finally had time to take—that meant they’d accomplished something.

They’d grown. They’d moved on.

Nathan’s radio crackled to life. “Hon, Dwight’s trying to get ahold of you.”

“Thanks, Laverne,” Nathan said. “Tell him I’m on channel three.” Cell towers were still out on this side of Haven and getting those back would take longer.

“Nathan?”

“Go ahead, Dwight.” Duke waved to get Nathan’s attention. Nathan rolled his eyes but smiled. “Duke’s here too.”

If that struck Dwight as unusual, he didn’t mention it. “Did either of you know that Seth was going to be in town?”

“Seth?” Nathan said stupidly.

“The little ghost guy?”

“Right,” Nathan said, giving Duke a _What the hell do I say?_ look. “That Seth. Uh…”

“You know he did say he was going to check something out,” Duke said.

“At Nathan’s house?”

They exchanged panic for a second; Nathan had told Seth he could set up shop in his craft room because there wasn’t space on Duke’s boat, and it was the closest thing to a workshop they had available.

“Uh, yeah,” Nathan said. “He’s… checking out the uh, ghost. In my house.”

Dwight paused. “Thought you said you didn’t believe in that.”

“I didn’t,” He said. “But things were weird, doors closing randomly, cabinets opening when they shouldn’t. Weird stuff.”

“Okay, Nathan. I’ll come by and check on your doors soon. Usually these things need a contractor, not a ghost hunter.”

“That’s what I told him,” Duke said.

Nathan rolled his eyes at him. “Right. Thanks, Dwight.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?” Dwight offered.

“Who?”

“Seth?”

“Oh, uh, no. I’ll do it when I get home.”

“Okay. Take care, Nathan.”

Nathan set the radio down, finally letting his breath out. “Thanks for the help.”

Duke ignored him. “Do you think we should have told him?”

“He wouldn’t understand.”

“Dwight wouldn’t understand wanting to believe that someone you love is back from the dead?” Duke said, raising an eyebrow.

Nathan sighed. “That’s different.”

They were quiet for a while.

Finally, Nathan said. “He’d try to stop us.”

Duke nodded. “Think that means we’re doing the wrong thing?”

“Maybe.”

More silence.

“It doesn’t change anything, does it?” Duke said. “We’re still going to try.”

“I’m not going to spend the rest of my life in front of a Ouija board, Duke.”

“If we bring her back,” Duke said tentatively, “What happens with us?”

Nathan’s hand was resting on the gearshift, Duke’s was on the side of his seat, loosely curled. Carefully, Nathan closed the distance, taking his hand, slowly rubbing circles on Duke’s knuckles with his thumb.

“It’ll be better,” Nathan said.

Duke looked at him, not quite voicing the question he was asking.

“Everything is better when she’s around; we know that.” He took a breath. “But we won’t leave you out this time.” 

Staring at their joined hands, Duke nodded. “Okay.”

It wasn’t a lot, but Nathan figured there was no way to make Duke believe it unless he saw it, and there was no way for that to happen until they’d brought Audrey home.

To keep Dwight from asking questions, Duke found a friend who was willing to let them hide the hideous van in his garage. Nathan didn’t ask Duke how he knew him, or why this guy thought they needed to hide a van. If things were going to work with him and Duke, he would need to be able to clock out sometimes.

While Seth tried to figure out how to cross dimensions, Nathan spent all of his energy trying to act normal. Duke was better at it than he was. He still laughed—because Duke always laughed when he was terrified—and no one was the wiser.

Nathan was shaky and sweaty, he spaced out of conversations and replied strangely, smiling to answer questions when it wasn’t appropriate.

Duke saved him more from that more times than he could count during the next four days. He swept in, answering questions or smoothing over Nathan’s blunders often enough that other people must have noticed, but no one commented.

Despite the fact that he and Duke had only rarely found themselves working at the same sites for the last few weeks, suddenly they were always at the same place, and Nathan got used to his presence. Even when he had to go be a cop, Duke was usually trailing behind him, and more often than not was just as effective at dealing with whatever was happening. Nathan might have even admitted that Duke was better at it, but he wouldn’t admit it under torture, even now that he’d be able to feel it.

In fact, Nathan had gotten so used to Duke’s presence that he started to worry. What if Duke was right? What if things would change if Audrey came back?

But would he trade that?

It was an impossible question, unfathomably horrible. He couldn’t leave her. He couldn’t lose him. There was no choice.

“Nate?” Duke asked.

“Whuh?” He looked up.

“How spicy are you able to handle without dying tonight?”

Nathan shrugged. “Medium?”

“Mild?”

“I said—”

“Mild it is,” Duke heaved a put-upon sigh but continued his work.

“Oh, sweet, food,” Seth said, wandering down and snagging a slice of pepper off the cutting board. Duke swiped at him, but he got away.

Nathan glared at Seth’s back. He wasn’t sure why it mattered, but he suddenly felt territorial about his taco Tuesday with Duke.

If Duke was annoyed, Nathan couldn’t tell, which only deepened his irritation. He knew it wasn’t reasonable, that Seth was sleeping on his couch and trying to keep a low profile, he couldn’t exactly leave to get dinner somewhere else.

This wasn’t a date anyway, so it wasn’t like Seth was crashing.

Still, he was resolutely silent while Duke finished cooking. Seth was anything but. Seth, in fact, did not stop talking the entire time, and he didn’t wait for replies or encouragement from Duke, which soured Nathan further.

He was just thinking about how much he wished Seth would leave when Dwight walked in.

“Seth?”

“Hi, Dwight,” Seth said casually, going back to hovering near Duke’s elbow and trying to steal food from the pan.

“What’s going on?” Dwight asked.

“Tacos,” Duke said casually, but Nathan knew him well enough to know that it was a front, and not a very good one, especially by Duke’s standards.

“I came by to fix your doors, Nathan,” Dwight said. “Gloria’s with the girls.”

Bringing up her name sounded like a threat somehow, the closest thing to “I’m telling mom” any of them had.

Nathan looked at Duke.

Duke looked at Nathan.

Seth sat in the middle of it, clearly not certain what was happening just above his head. 

“What’s really going on?” Dwight asked.

“Audrey isn’t… gone,” Nathan said, hating how it sounded, knowing what Dwight was thinking.

Even knowing didn’t prepare Nathan for the kindness in Dwight’s eyes, and the sadness. God that look would be unbearable if he wasn’t so sure he was right.

“Nathan…”

“He’s telling the truth,” Duke said. “We’ve both… seen things and—”

“Neither of you are objective when it comes to Audrey,” Dwight pointed out. “Losing her was hard on all of us—”

“Right,” Duke snapped, “This has been so hard on you. You got your daughters; you got your normal life. We lost her. We had to make a trade.”

“Duke,” Nathan said, reaching for him. He’d had no idea this was simmering under Duke’s surface, and he swallowed a wave of bitterness. He’d missed it again.

Duke shook him off. “We have a way to get her back—”

“At what cost?” Dwight said. “You want to talk about trades? Let’s say she really isn’t dead, and you can bring her back. Does Croatoan come with her?”

“What’s a Croatoan?” Seth asked, but no one looked at him, much less bothered to answer.

“She hasn’t mentioned him,” Nathan said. “I think she’s alone.”

“Mentioned him? You’ve talked to her?” Dwight asked.

“Yeah we… made contact.” Clearly Duke realized that telling Dwight about the Ouija board wouldn’t help their case. “And Seth figured out a way to help her.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Dwight said, the same aching sympathy on his face. “Have you thought about that?”

“Then we’ll TRY AGAIN!” Duke shouted, slamming his hand against the table.

“It’s all I think about,” Nathan said quietly, undercutting Duke’s uncharacteristic rage. “I didn’t even… I didn’t want to think about this at first but now… Dwight we have a way. We can do this. And even if we can’t… at least we’ll have tried everything. At least we didn’t give up on her.”

Dwight sighed. “Fine. But I’m not watching.” He left, and Nathan noticed that he took the time to close the door slowly behind him, which meant that he’d probably really wanted to slam it.

“I’m an exhausting person to be friends with, aren’t I?” Nathan said.

Duke looked at him; his eyes were rimmed in red, but he smiled at Nathan. “You’re just figuring that out?”

“Someone should have told me.”

No one said anything for a few seconds. It wasn’t quite tense, but it wasn’t the same atmosphere as before.

Finally, Duke shrugged like a dog shaking water off itself. “Food’s ready.”

And with that, they went back to trying to joke, but Nathan was lost thinking about Audrey and Duke and Dwight, and Duke was just as absent, so mostly Seth talked and neither of them listened, not that they would have understood what he was saying anyway.

Seth had miscalculated how long it would take to build whatever it was he was building. The two additional days were the longest in Nathan’s life, they had to be. He barely slept, ate only because it would hurt Duke’s feelings if Nathan ignored his cooking.

He was, however, sleeping at four in the morning when Seth leaned over his bed to shake him awake. “It’s done!”

Still mostly asleep, Nathan swatted at him. His trouble was gone, but his senses hadn’t weakened back to normal yet. Seth’s sweat and energy drinks scent was overwhelming and unpleasant.

“Did you tell Duke?” He asked, rubbing his face and trying to sort through the images of his dreams.

“Not yet.”

“I’ll call him.”

“Have him meet us at the beach where you said there was a rift.”

Nathan nodded and called Duke.

“Nate? Are you okay?”

He wondered if the nightmares would persist even if they succeeded today, if they would always wake up wondering whether one of them hadn’t come back from their various brushes with death from the last weeks of the troubles.

For now, he just said, “I’m fine, Duke. Seth’s ready. Meet us at the beach.”

The sun was crawling into the sky, dragging the dull gray day up from the horizon, as reluctant as Nathan was eager.

Duke was already there, standing in front of the jagged wood and waiting for them exactly where he’d stood twenty-seven years ago, holding Lucy’s hand.

This time, he reached for Nathan. “Are we going to do this?” He asked quietly. “Really?”

Nathan nodded. “We’re going to try.”

“What if…”

“Nathan squeezed his hand, wishing he wasn’t thinking about the same possibility. “We’ll get through it.” He wished he believed it.

Seth set up the strange thing he’d built. It looked like an ugly, empty mirror frame built out of black PVC tubing, standing upright on the beach. It centered over where they estimated the thinny was, as near as Nathan could approximate from when he’d been there.

“Just a little more to the left,” He said. “That should be good.”

Duke’s palm was warm and dry against Nathan’s, and Nathan almost pulled his hand away so he could wipe it on his jeans, but he didn’t want to hide his fear from Duke, didn’t need to. It had its twin in Duke, just like their grief had been paired, so too were their hope and terror right now.

Seth checked the wires that ran out from the frame and attacked to a black box he held. “We are about to embark on a journey of—” 

“Do it, Seth!”

“Alright, fine. We’re raising the dead and doing unprecedented scientific experiments, I just thought the moment needed a little gravitas.”

“Seth.”

He took a deep breath and then finally flipped the switch. It sparked, hummed. Nathan felt the energy charge the air, as if lighting were about to strike the beach. The frame shook, the space inside it twisting and blurring.

“Audrey!” Duke called, but she didn’t emerge at the sound of her name.

Seconds ticked by like hours. The sun continued to rise, uncaring, even as the frame shook until Nathan realized that it would not hold forever. They were running out of time.

“AUDREY!” He called, as if he might have better luck than Duke.

He didn’t. A piece of the frame shook loose, splintering, and the blurring swirl in the middle of the frame flickered. Nathan could see the decaying dock through it again. They were running out of time.

He gripped Duke’s hand, hard enough to hurt and Duke returned the favor. They shared a glance. Absurdly, Nathan remembered a line from a book, something he didn’t remember reading even as it emerged in his mind with crystal clarity.

_Half in agony, half in hope._

Sharing their agony and their hope, he and Duke turned back to the frame. “AUDREY!”

He thought maybe something was moving on the other side of the frame, but he looked away when it exploded. Bits of plastic flew everywhere, one of them embedded itself in Nathan’s forearm, just below where his sleeve was rolled up.

The pain registered as he and Duke fell to the sand, covering each other’s heads with their arms until after an endless instant, it was over.

The beach was as quiet as beaches ever were, with the waves rustling against the shore and the seagulls screaming about whatever it was that kept gulls so constantly irate. Nathan wanted to scream with them.

They had been so close.

“Uh,” Seth said from next to them. “Guys?”

They looked up at the same instant, struggled forward at the same time. Nathan didn’t realize until they were folding her between them that they were holding each other’s hands, still.

Had Audrey always been this much shorter than Duke? Had her head fit so perfectly underneath Nathan’s chin before?

He couldn’t remember. Those details had blurred out and he would have to relearn them, because she was pressed between him and Duke, holding them both closer.

She shouldered them apart for a moment so she could look up at them, a tearful smile on her face.

Seth muttered something about going to get breakfast. Later, Nathan would learn that Dwight had found him wandering around aimlessly and they’d gotten burritos and Seth had explained the whole, unbelievable mess, which Dwight had then had to confirm for himself. As was the way of small towns, it would spread out from there until everyone knew that, somehow, Audrey Parker had come back to Haven.

For now, though, all Nathan needed was Duke and Audrey, and her constant, quiet repetition. “I’m here. I’m home.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, it's still a better ending than canon


End file.
